Fake cycle parts

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Heisenberg71

When you're dead, you're dead
Location
Wakefield
Nasty!
Loads of that crap on eBay. :sad:
 

Drago

Legendary Member
But if the dodgy kit is by and large coming from China, then why should it not be in the title? No where do they suggest that legitimate Chinese manufacturers aren't marking safe and decent kit.
 

raleighnut

Legendary Member
I think one of the worrying trends is that the fakers have twigged that selling stuff really cheap alerts people to the fact that the item may be fake so they've put up the prices to 'that's a good deal' level so that they are believable as a 'discount price'
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
I have some experience of this; I naively bought a cheap Specialized jersey from what looked like an American website thinking it was surplus stock or something. Then I discovered it was coming from China and when it arrived I knew straight away that it was a fake. The colours were wrong and the quality terrible so I stuck it on Ebay, only to be reprimanded for selling fake goods!

More recently I bought an FSA chainset from Ebay for £170. The seller in Taiwan told me it was genuine but "excess stock" so I placed the order. It arrived wrapped in brown paper and on close examination it looked too well-made to be a copy; it weighs what the spec says it should and has performed well for almost three years as long as you ignore the design limitations of the BB30 system. The amount of work and detailed finishing that has gone into the chainset makes me believe that it simply wouldn't be worthwhile making fakes; it can only be a factory over-run and if these can be sold as cheaply as this was sold, then we are being seriously ripped off when we pay the full £700 list price.

Call me an idiot but I work in manufacturing and I see how much gets rejected, over-produced, dumped and sold off cheap in every industry in which I'm involved.
 
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I guess people have to be selective and do their research. There are some great buys from China that are copies and there are some that are over-runs (authorised or other wise by the brands owners.) from OEMs. Interestingly Alibaba has a better reputation of flogging good copies and over-runs than Ebay. I would not buy a single bike component from Ebay if safety is an issue. Sadly Amazon is now on a similar track.

The guy in the BBC documentary bought of all things a carbon handlebar? Thank god he is not into skydiving as he would have bought his parachute gear from Ebay as well.

What an interestingly World.
 
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